Lately, I’ve been doing a lot of research and studies on Motivation, Habits and Gamification. When it comes to experience designing, I believe these are the most important components that need to be considered.

Hooked is based on Nir Eyal’s years of research, consulting, and practical experience. He explains the Hook Model in relation to why some products capture widespread attention. I highly recommend this read to everyone!

Gamification Pioneer Yu-kai Chou takes reader on a journey to learn his twelve years of obsessive research in creating the Octalysis Framework, and how to apply the framework to create engaging and successful experiences in their product, workplace, marketing, and personal lives. Rewarding isn’t only about points, badges and leaderboard, but there is more to it and this book explains that really well!

Most of the time, motivation is related to rewards like money, but Daniel H. Pink asserts that the secret to high performance and satisfaction-at work, at school, and at home—is the deeply human need to direct our own lives, to learn and create new things, and to do better by ourselves and our world.

Final Comments

I would love to hear what have you been reading or recommend? Please do share in the comment box below. If you like these recommendations, please don’t forget to share it with your friends and family.

]]>http://sonaliagrawal.com/ux-book-recommendations/feed/0On Working Remotelyhttp://sonaliagrawal.com/on-working-remotely/
http://sonaliagrawal.com/on-working-remotely/#respondWed, 16 May 2018 18:09:28 +0000http://sonaliagrawal.com/?p=48129motivation, dedication and passion. Yes, these are the 3 most important ingredients that have helped me stay productive and efficient.]]>With a little bit of luck finally, I found a contract opportunity that let me work remote full-time. It’s been a year since I’ve been working remotely, and what better time than now to share my experience, ups and downs and how to work productively and efficiently.

It took me almost a year to find the right remote opportunity, considering my profession involves architecting user experiences for the mobile/web. And when it comes to UX, tons of collaboration and communication is required. But, in all honesty, I would say, I have never been so productive and efficient than now.

There’s a myth that goes: “working from home is all about doing household chores and taking care of the kids”; but I beg to differ. Working from home requires a lot of motivation, dedication and passion. Yes, these are the 3 most important ingredients that have helped me stay productive and efficient.

My Methodology

I know this sounds like I’m talking about the design process, but as important this is before designing, it carries the same weight before beginning to work remotely. What kind of requirements? If I am working for an agency or corporation, it’s very important I understand:

what is the project’s goal

what are the important links to the project

what are the deliverables required and timelines

what is the company’s design process

what are their design tools

how do they communicate with clients

how does the team communicate internally

Most important of all, to make all the above happen, I need to make sure I have time setup with the team I am going to work with to get accustomed to the way they work and the way that I work. It’s best to be aligned with the team and project from the beginning.

Communication is the key ingredient when it comes to remote working. As I am working on my own, I like to constantly communicate with the team where I am in the process, get feedback and share my progress.

In today’s time, there are so many tools for communication that have made working remote that much easier and productive:

slack – the go to tool

google chat – a good alternative

zoom – for video conferencing

email -mostly used for client communication and company wide announcements, etc.

Calendar – I can’t live without this since it let’s my team be aware of meetings and appointments

Google Drive/Dropbox -file sharing, backup and management

As I mentioned before, there are some jobs which require face-to-face collaboration and UX field being one. But, in my opinion, most of the time, we work in a distributed environment, where the designers, developers, PM’s, etc., could be in different time zones, states and countries all together. How would you collaborate then?

Travel to a common location once or twice depending on the project duration

Video Conferencing – Have impromptu meetings when the need be. With the advent of tools like Zoom, you can use features like whiteboarding, etc.

Slack – Slack can be integrated with 3rd party tools and out of the box it comes with useful features anyways. I make sure I share wireframes, sketches or anything that would help the team collaborate and communicate effectively.

I can’t emphasize enough on the importance of setting up a work schedule and sticking with it. And in my honest opinion, this is directly related to having a passion for the work you do. I just love architecting experiences, and from the moment I am part of a project, I know what I have to do and how.

Usually when I am contracting, I know I have 8 hours in a day to work, and if the team is distributed, I’ll break down my hours accordingly. This makes collaborating and communicating that much more effective.

Working remotely doesn’t mean that you have to skip lunch. There have been times when I’ve forgotten to grab lunch, and as far as I can say, that’s the worst thing to do to your self. Eating and drinking appropriately and on time will lead to being more productive.

In these many years of working remote, I’ve learnt to take breaks, though sometimes, I do forget, but taking 5-10 minute of break 2-3 times in 8 hours, has helped me be way more productive. Set a timer, look outside (which helps reduce eye strain), meditate and you will be good to go.

Final Words

Working from home, remote, freelancing, whatever you’d like to call it, I’ve definitely learned to be more productive, motivated and way less distracted compared to an office environment. I’ve been able to get more high-quality work done. I now can’t imagine my life commuting to work for an hour and then end up having less work hours leading to less productivity.

If you’ve enjoyed reading this and find this useful, please don’t forget to share and add your comments and experiences on working remotely.

]]>http://sonaliagrawal.com/on-working-remotely/feed/0UI/UX Resource of the Month: Mobbinhttp://sonaliagrawal.com/ui-ux-resource-of-the-month-mobbin/
http://sonaliagrawal.com/ui-ux-resource-of-the-month-mobbin/#commentsWed, 09 May 2018 18:00:11 +0000http://sonaliagrawal.com/?p=48002Beginning today, I will be publishing a UI/UX Design Resource every month that will not only feature a design, but also link to a website that I find helpful for patterns or a tool or app that has caught my attention.

About Mobbin:

Mobbin is a hand-picked collection of the latest mobile design patterns from apps that reflect the best in design. Jiho lim, the founder, has hand-picked over 100 apps and 5,000 patterns (screenshots from iPhone X) from app stores of different countries, not just the US.

First Impression:

I just love the clean and minimalistic approach of the website. It’s a simple 3-column website. The best part about of Mobbin is that the designs shown here are from real live apps.

The column on the left is the main navigation, header and footer area. The center column is the main content area focusing on browsing apps, patterns, categories and search. The column on the right is dedicated to the job board.

An interesting thing about Mobbin is that you can customize the layout by hiding the job board but for that you would need to upgrade to a pro account. The pro account would allow you to:

Create Libraries

Export Patterns

Full Screen/Hide Side Job Board

Version Travel (coming soon)

I am not sure I would be upgrading to pro anytime soon, but what does interest me is the Version Travel feature. I wonder if it’s got to do with seeing how the current apps evolved to their current designs? Will have to wait and watch I guess!

Basic Free Plan Features:

As a free member, you can still do a lot, for example, browse mobile designs by apps or patterns and search for apps or patterns. You can also filter apps by categories like business, education, food & drink, etc., or filter patterns by components like calendar, list, etc.

The website also has a job board for designers and developers, pretty neat for sure!

Overall Impression

I am quite impressed with the website and already using it as my source of inspiration for patterns and trends that are live in the wild. Don’t forget to check it out yourself, bookmark it and let me know your thoughts.

Have a website, app or pattern inspiration link to share?

If you have any links for UI/UX Design Resources or tools, that you’d like me to feature, please share them with me on info(at)sonaliagrawal.com or in the comment box below.

As part of my UX (Experience Design) process when working on mobile design projects, I like to provide a list of deliverables, that includes:

Information Architecture Sitemap

App Flowmap

Wireframes (annotated)

Notification Strategy Plan

Prototypes

Competitive Analysis Report

Personas

User Testing

Personas

If you notice in the list, #4 says Notification Strategy Plan. What this is is basically a spreadsheet listing proposed notifications.

We all know how important notifications are for direct user engagement. But what’s more important in the first place is to plan for an effective notification strategy.

Title of Notification: A title to easily reference the notification.

Notification Message: A descriptive message that will be displayed as notification.

Call to Action: Actions to navigate the user to a screen in the app or outside. Example: Renew membership, share recipe, etc.

Landing Screen: The screen that the Call to Action will take the user to depending on what the notification is about.

Trigger: What event caused this notification to be sent?

Frequency: How many times should the notification be sent and how frequently. Example: one time, scheduled, recurring, 10 days, 20 days, etc.

Type (In-App, Push): Is the notification In-App or push. Some other types that could be used are (depending on the project), email, phone, sms, etc.

User/Actor: Who will this notification be sent to. Again, depending on the project, it could be something like Loyalty customers, Patients, etc.

User Data Collected: What type of user data are you collecting with this notification. Examples: name, email, phone, etc.

Notes/Comments: An open place to add any thoughts, questions or ideas about this notification.

From the above bullets, I find bullet 3 and 4 really important. They help you in not only informing your designs but also making better product decisions.

Having a notification strategy plan in place helps the business in thinking of better ways they can engage users, provide convenience and value to app users without causing frustration which push notifications are sadly known to do.

Looks like Amazon is all set to rule the world! It’s the hub of shopping! I mean, just look at their footer for once! Do we need to say anything? It’s just insane, but pretty amazing!

Amazon Prime Wardrobe

Currently in beta, Prime Wardrobe is a concept pretty (not exactly) similar to Stitch Fix or Trunk Club, where you order clothes and if you don’t like them, you can send them back within seven days! If you decide to keep certain items, you can get anywhere from 10%-15% discount on returns, which doesn’t seem so bad.

What does this mean for other services and retailers?

In my honest opinion, it does mean a lot. Especially when we know retail isn’t doing as good as it used to at one point of time. It is tough to say anything so soon, since the service hasn’t even launched publicly, but, I am sure, a lot of the retailers and services like Stitch Fix, Trunk Club, FiveFour, etc., might be in their boardrooms discussing about this.

Will I try it out?

Personally, I haven’t used Amazon for buying clothes, seriously, I have never. Since couple of years now, I’ve been using Stitch Fix for my fashion needs (which is on need basis, not monthly), and I am very happy with it. The excitement of not knowing what I am going to get, is fun!

Now, with Prime Wardrobe, I am my own stylist, which could be good or bad depending on my taste and knowledge of fashion (which is not so good). Considering that it’s free for Prime members (which I truly am), I might actually give it a shot. So, stay tuned for another post on that soon, hopefully!

]]>http://sonaliagrawal.com/be-ready-amazon-is-ready-to-take-over-your-closet/feed/0Small Update: Portfolio Pagehttp://sonaliagrawal.com/small-update-portfolio-page/
http://sonaliagrawal.com/small-update-portfolio-page/#respondFri, 09 Jun 2017 19:01:22 +0000http://sonaliagrawal.com/?p=6189Finally, I have my portfolio page up and running. The portfolio menu link does not direct to a PDF anymore (though I still have it at the bottom of the page)! Yay!

The page has a sample of my best projects that are relevant to the work I do and want to keep doing in the future. So, head over to my portfolio page, browse my work and do let me know your thoughts.

]]>http://sonaliagrawal.com/small-update-portfolio-page/feed/0Mirr.io for Sketch – First Impressionshttp://sonaliagrawal.com/mirr-io-for-sketch-first-impressions/
http://sonaliagrawal.com/mirr-io-for-sketch-first-impressions/#respondWed, 07 Jun 2017 08:01:51 +0000http://sonaliagrawal.com/?p=1383With a plethora of tools online, its actually getting harder to decide which one to stick with in the long-term.

The biggest tool in my kit is Sketch. I don’t know what I’ll do without it and I still wonder what I had been doing without it (PS of course, but it’s not the same) till it first came out. I use Sketch mostly for wireframes, UI designs, flow maps, sitemaps, etc., but the biggest drawback so far has been the lack of a prototyping plugin.

There are tools like Flinto and Principle that allow to create interactive animations/prototypes but then the biggest drawback with these tools has been sharing the prototype with your clients or testers. Currently, the only way you can share a prototype is by sending the actual work file and having them open it in their mobile devices (which is not the most efficient way of doing it) IMHO.

You can also use Axure and Justinmind, but Axure does not have any integration with sketch yet and Justinmind does, but the hefty amount that you pay for its subscription and the learning curve is just not possible for a freelancer like me.

In comes Craft by InVision. Wow, now that’s a tool I’d use anytime, but, there’s a problem! It’s integration with Invision only. It does make sense from a business perspective, but as a freelancer, mmm, not for me,

Just this last week, I got to know about Mirr.io and man, I am in love with it already. Firstly, it’s developed by a digital product and service design studio, Normally, that felt the need to build such a tool after having frustrations with other tools, and secondly, it’s for sketch, no third-party integrations, nothing. Just plain simple sketch!

My First Impressions

Within minutes of installing the app, I was all set to play with it and trust me, I was ready with a simple prototype in less than 5 minutes. Click here to view the prototype.

It didn’t take me any learning to begin prototyping, that’s how easy it is. Sharing is the best part. With just a click you publish the prototype to web, a URL is created and you can share it with whoever you want!

With a new tool, there are of course some cons as well, like Mirr.io does not have a lot of features like a screen-recorder, advanced interaction and motion design, but I’m sure Normally will update based on feedbacks. And let’s not forget, this is quick prototyping tool.

Screenshots of Mirr.io

CONCLUSION

So far, I am loving Mirr.io and will continue using it for a freelance project I’ve been involved in. So go ahead, and don’t forget to give this tool a try and let me know your thoughts!

]]>http://sonaliagrawal.com/mirr-io-for-sketch-first-impressions/feed/0Personal Diary – Summer Holidayshttp://sonaliagrawal.com/personal-diary-summer-holidays/
http://sonaliagrawal.com/personal-diary-summer-holidays/#respondTue, 06 Jun 2017 16:51:13 +0000http://sonaliagrawal.com/?p=1369Its summer in Texas, well, not officially until June 20th, but for me, as a mom, it starts the day my kid gets out of school for summer vacation.

Every year, the thought of my kid’s summer holidays drives me crazy. It’s a good break for the child, no doubt, but when you have a child that just can’t stay at home doing nothing, is definitely something to think about.

For the previous years, summer camps, short trips to India (my home country) or having parents visiting from India made it easier to not worry about where to drop the kid off during the vacations. But this year is a little different, since I’ve moved to freelancing full-time, which means, I stay at home with my kids.

It’s exciting in its own way, since I get to be with my kid, hear her stories, play outdoors with her, go on walks, and a lot more, but keeping an empty mind busy is a tough job.

So, for this year, I’ve decided to get my kid into programming, starting off with HTML, CSS and then JavaScript. It’s said that at this age (4+ years), kids can learn pretty much grasp anything and everything quickly as compared to adults, be it swimming, tennis, basketball, biking, etc. And now that my daughter will enter middle school, learning the basics of web programming would be for the best.

Let’s see how it goes, but so far, she definitely has shown some good progress by starting to experiment with HTML on her own with the help of “HTML5 Foundations” I’ve kept in my library for so many years.

]]>http://sonaliagrawal.com/personal-diary-summer-holidays/feed/0Mid-Year Updateshttp://sonaliagrawal.com/mid-year-updates/
http://sonaliagrawal.com/mid-year-updates/#respondThu, 01 Jun 2017 15:10:40 +0000http://sonaliagrawal.com/?p=1357Today is June 1st, beginning of the mid-year and when it comes to my website, I usually like to keep updating it whenever I get a chance.

As you can see, I’ve completely redesigned the look and feel of the website but decided to keep the colors the same to not deviate a lot. Since, my website is built on WordPress, the option to customize a theme is very important. Till now, I was using Uncode from Undsgn, but for some reason, it made my website really slow, even after I deleted all the unused themes and plugins that come loaded with WP.

After a lot of research and testing, I finally decided to use Divi as the theme and in all honesty, I am loving it! My website is so much faster and easily customizable, thanks to the Divi Builder. There are so many features that I can make a completely new blog post about it, but its best to leave it at this time.

With this big update, I intend to start creating case studies of the projects I’ve done and been involved with, which will not only help you get an idea on the work I do, but also how and my thought process behind it.

What is empathy? Empathy is understanding the feelings and emotions of others, and you can’t just build a product based on empathy unless you go out and talk to those users you are building the product for!